Beloved Black Tea

Black tea is the most popular tea in North America and Britain. It is used in iced teas and popular blends such as "English Breakfast", "Irish Breakfast", and scented teas like  "Earl Grey". 

Black tea is traditionally steeped in boiling water until the pot runs dry! DON'T DO THIS, PLEASE!!!! You are missing out on the true aromas and flavours of this wonderful tea if you are simply pouring boiling water over your tea bags and leaving them sit until you drink it all up! Read on. 

Black tea is a real tea made from the C. sinensis plant. It is produced in India, China, Sri Lanka and Africa and more. It's very flavourful and aromatic and does well with a touch of milk, honey, lemon, sugar or sweetener. It is the only tea that is fully oxidized. 

Black tea is referred to as 'normal' tea in Britain and 'red tea' in China!

The processing of black tea can be quick: as quick as one day. The raw leaves are withered, then rolled by hand or machine. This begins the oxidation process. PLEASE NOTE: some sources mistakenly call this process 'fermentation'. It is NOT fermentation. Fermentation involves the action of micro-organisms. Pu-erh tea is fermented. Black tea is not. It is oxidized. (Heiss & Heiss)

If rolled, this is called the 'orthodox' method. Higher quality teas come from this method because the buds don't break. This can be done by hand or machine. The finest leaves are picked first for this method.

The CTC method, or Cut-Tear-Curl method is a sub-par method of processing tea, and it is used for tea in tea bags. The lower quality tea leaves are pressed through a roller with teeth, cutting and rolling the tea at the same time. This type of tea has great surface area, allowing a fast steep time. Certainly this is more convenient for a person on the run. CTC teas count for about 90% of the black teas produced in today's market, and much of Africa's teas go to this production. 

After being rolled or put through the CTC method, the leaves are allowed to rest. This rest releases the enzymes that hold flavour and aroma.  They are then dried in ovens, halting the oxidation method and sealing in those wonderful flavours and aromas! 

Black teas should be steeped at just under boiling point, at about 96 degrees Celsius. They steep at the highest of all the teas. They should steep for about 3-5 minutes. THEY DO NOT STEEP WELL THE SECOND TIME since tannins have been released. (Although some sources, Cheadle and Kilby included, say black teas only contain tannin 'like' substances. Nonetheless, they all agree on a single steep.)

The liquor of black tea is a coppery, reddish brown. Steeped too long and it becomes astringent and you will have the 'puckery' feeling in your mouth. Black teas pair well with many foods, including meats, breads, chocolates and sweets! (Keating & Long)

The only tea that does NOT take milk well is the "champagne of teas", Darjeeling. This is a very unique black tea grown in the northeastern foothills of India, in the Himalayan Mountains. It is a pungent, crisp, muscatel tea. Steep at a lower temperature, between 80-90 degrees Celsius, and for only 3 minutes, and do not add milk. Heiss & Heiss recommend tasting the tea soon after steeping as the flavour may 'bolt'. 

Some popular black teas:

ASSAM

 - from NE India, the Assam Valley

 - grows C. Sinensis var. assamica

 - in most breakfast blends

 - very strong tea

 - can be processed both Orthodox and CTC

 - CTC Assam that is famously British

CEYLON

 - grown in Sri Lanka (previously named Ceylon)

 - strong and tart

 - aromatic

 - teas here are classified by altitude

NILGIRI

 - SE India, from the 'Blue Mountains' of Nilgiri

 - brisk and fragrant

 - often used in blends

YUNNAN

 - SW China

 - rich and peppery

 - has been produced for over 1700 years!

BLENDED BLACK TEAS:

 - ENGLISH BREAKFAST:

  - has Assam in it

  - takes milk and sugar well

  - ironically developed in Scotland, but Queen Victoria loved it when she summered at Balmoral

 - IRISH BREAKFAST

  - has Assam and Ceylon

  - hearty, tart

  - is famously strong

There are many more types of black tea. My favourite is a scented black tea: EARL GREY!!! I have done a previous post on it. You can read it here. 

The Tea Association of the USA says three or more cups of black tea a day can decrease your risk of heart disease and stroke! So enjoy your cuppa - guilt free! What's your favourite black tea?

Works Cited:

The Little Black Book of Tea - Heneberry

The Tea Book: All Things Tea - Cheadle and Kilby

The Tea Enthusiast's Handbook - Heiss & Heiss

How to Make Tea: The Science Behind The Leaf - Keating & Long

The Wonders of White Tea

I remember trying my first white tea years ago, before I was introduced to loose leaf tea. I believe it was a ginger pear white tea, and it tasted like water. Maybe. It was a bagged tea from the grocery store. After that I was completely uninterested in white tea until I tried White Nectarine from DAVIDsTEA. Oh my. The flavour in this tea completely blew my mind. It was mild and gentle but completely...THERE. White nectarines are my favourite fruit and so to taste a tea that captured the taste so perfectly was amazing. I was sold. 

White tea is a real 'tea'. It comes from the Camellia sinensis plant, the sinensis variety (as opposed to the assam variety). Upon tasting it, however, one might think it's an herbal tea! It's that gentle and mild. It is picked early in spring, only from the very tips of the tea plant. "Authentic" white tea, according to Heiss & Heiss, only comes from the Fuijan province of China. Other sources agree, saying even though other countries grow and pluck white tea, it simply isn't the quality as found in the mountainous region of Fuijan. 

White tea is called "White" not because of the colour of the liquor, which is often a light yellow, but because the buds have a soft, downy white fuzz on them that is a silvery white colour, as seen below. 

There are two main types of white tea: Silver Needle and White Peony. They will be discussed in further detail below. There are two more rare types of white tea, also from Fuijan: Gong Mei and Shou Mei. They are not uniform in colour or appearance. Blooming flower teas are often made with white teas since they expand so much in water. Below you can see a small experiment I conducted with Buddha's Blend from DAVIDsTEA. The left shows the one teaspoon of tea without water, the right shows the expansion with just two tablespoons of water!

White tea can also take on added flavours and scents beautifully and often is part of high quality jasmine scented teas. 

White tea is the least processed of all the real teas. Cheadle and Kilby call it a 'basically unprocessed' tea. It is plucked by hand and left to dry. Therefore it undergoes minimal oxidation, unlike every other type of tea. According to Heneberry, it really is a type of green tea but without the rolling or breaking of the leaves. The leaves are left to dry in the sun. Even rain can cause severe damage, and since plucking season only lasts two weeks of the year, one can understand how this tea can be expensive and sought after!

The tea liquor itself is often a light yellow colour. Heneberry cites that it has the least caffeine of all the teas, but Keating & Long say recent studies found some white teas may have comparable levels of caffeine to other teas. All sources I looked at agree that white tea has large amounts of phenolic compounds, which are antioxidants. Some white teas may, in fact, have the highest antioxidant content of any teas! Why is this so? The reason again comes to how it is picked and plucked and processed. Only the tip of the tea plant is picked and plucked for white tea, and only at the first sign of spring. This part of the plant, at this time of its development, contains the highest concentration of nutrients, volatile oils, chlorophyll and flavour! BUT IT IS ALL DONE BY HAND. 

White tea has a light, sweet taste and hardly any astringency. Still, because it is a real tea, you can oversteep it. As stated, the liquor is pale yellow to pale green. It often has a mild, honey like flavour. Heiss & Heiss state that white tea has "a full body, clean, short-finished, soft and sweet" taste. 

Silver Needle is the finest, top grade of white teas. It consists of just the shoots and a single tip. It is the most expensive. It is sweet like a honeysuckle and has a clear liquor. Silver Needle is barely oxidized, at about a 5% rate. 

White Peony white teas bloom when steeped. White Peony consists of two leaves and a bud. It still has the silver needle but ALSO has two lower leaves. This actually contributes to a more complex, melon like flavour. It can be oxidized between 5-12%. It is less expensive and has a stronger flavour. It takes on added flavours well. 

Heiss & Heiss offer a caution: Bai Hao Yin Zhen is the true, original white tea from Fuijan, China, made from large, succulent buds. Other places in China and elsewhere in the world are attempting to make white teas but the non-Fuijanese bud white teas are just not up to par. However, even Heiss & Heiss say these less-than-desirable teas can be quite tasty. 

Some of my favourite white teas are:

Buddha's Blend from DAVIDsTEA

White Nectarine from DAVIDsTEA and

Vanilla Coco Loco from T By Daniel

(pictured below, counterclockwise from top)

DAVIDsTEA recommends steeping white teas at 90 degrees Celsius for 4-7 minutes. 

T by Daniel recommends steeping white teas at 80 degrees Celsius for 3-5 minutes. 

The Mighty Timer App recommend steeping white teas at 85 degrees Celsius for 4 minutes. 

My personal experience recommends steeping white teas at 80 degrees Celsius for 4 minutes. 

I have found white tea very weak for resteeping, but you may have more luck than me. 

Keating & Long recommend pairing white teas with such delightful foods as brie cheeses, delicate pastries and any lighter faire. Yum!!

If you've never tried white tea, give it a try. I would highly recommend jumping right to the looseleaf type, since the grocery store version is so disappointing. Not only can white tea be beneficial for your health, but it can also be a really tasty treat. 

Happy Steeping!

Works Cited

The Little Black Book of Tea M. Heneberry
The Tea Book: All Things Tea Cheadle and Kilby
How to Make Tea: The Science Behind the Leaf Keating and Long
The Simple Guide To Tea C Scott
The Tea Enthusiast's Handbook Heiss and Heiss
DAVIDsTEA.com
TbyDaniel.com
Personal Experience

Remarkable Rooibos

Rooibos (pronounced ROY-bus or ROY-boss) tea has become one of my absolute favourite teas! It's similar in taste and appearance to tea but isn't tea! It is not made from the Camellia sinensis plant, but comes from the dried leaves of the Aspalathus linearis plant. It is also known as redbush tea. It has some remarkable health benefits as well as being a yummy treat. 

Rooibos is a great substitute for regular tea if you are seeking a flavourful caffeine free alternative. It has a sweet and nutty taste and takes flavours added to it quite easily. My favourite rooibos is by T by Daniel: Blue Berrymore. It has a delicious blueberry flavour without being overwhelmed by it. That's the delight of rooibos: it has its own flavour, like 'regular' tea, but can have flavours and scents added to it to make very lovely blends. 

Rooibos is native to the mountains of Cederberg in South Africa where the air is crisp and clean. Unsuccessful attempts have been made to grow it elsewhere in the world! It seems it is only happy in its home and native land. It wasn't traded until 1904 but was a well kept secret until then. 

The tea is made from the green leaves of the A. linearis plant. As they ferment in the sun they turn a beautiful, coppery red. 

"The United States Department of Agriculture has confirmed many of the health benefits of drinking rooibos tea including its ability to reduce the risk of various types of cancer, heart disease and premature aging." 

(www.vegkitchen.com)

Drinking rooibos provides many health benefits, including the following:

• fighting cancer, due to being high in antioxidants
• high in vitamin C
• eases digestive problems
• strengthens bones and teeth
• great for skin and hair
• soothes insomnia
• South African locals use it for colicky babies
• lowers hypertension
• anti-inflammatory due to the high levels of polyphenols aspalathin and nothofagin
• eases headaches
• eases nervous tension
• helps get rid of eczema since it contains phenylpyretic acid
• no caffeine
• contains many micronutrients, including: copper, iron, potassium, calcium, fluoride, zinc and Manganese.
• 
  
• How do we steep this lovely tea??

DAVIDsTEA recommends steeping it at 96 degrees Celsius for 4-7 minutes.

T By Daniel recommends steeping it at 80 degrees Celsius for 3-5 minutes. 

I personally recommend steeping it at about 90 degrees Celsius for 4-7 minutes. I have yet to oversteep it, likely due to the lack of tannins in it! It is just so darn yummy! 

Locals take their rooibos either clear (the proper way of saying tea with nothing added to it) or with a bit of lemon or honey. The Tea Book: All Things Tea recommends taking it without milk, also with a bit of lemon or honey if desired. MILK IS NOT WELCOME IN THIS TEA.

If you've reached the end of this post you may be thinking, as I am, that it all sounds too good to be true. It will save your life and make you beautiful and you will live to be a thousand years old. Maybe not, but darnit, it is a great tea. It's worth trying, and it's worth buying a good quality rooibos to give it a fair shot. 

Even if it only offers a tenth of the benefits, wow! Give it a try! I find the ritual of making tea and sipping my tea soothing in and of itself, which probably relieves hypertension and boosts immunity anyway!

Let me know what your favourite rooibos teas are. 

Happy Steeping. 

B

Sources:

The Little Black Book of Tea, Mike Heneberry

The Tea Book: All Things Tea, Cheadle and Kilby

www.vegkitchen.com, "9 Proven Health Benefits of Rooibos Tea"

www.DAVIDsTEA.com

www.TbyDaniel.com

Personal Experience

How Expensive Is This Habit?

I was sipping my iced tea the other day...Forever Nuts by DAVIDsTEA,and I got to wondering how much I was actually using this summer. I love it. Between that and BFF from T by Daniel I'm going through a LOT of Iced Tea.

How much is this habit?? Especially with a heavier tea like Forever Nuts??

So I thought it would be fun to do a few calculations. Out came the kitchen scale, my perfect spoon and a few of my favourite DAVIDsTEAs. (For this experiment I only used my DAVIDsTEAs.)

Please note: I use two rather heaping PS for iced tea OR a pot of tea. So the cost associated with an iced tea is the SAME as for a pot of tea. I use a level PS for a cup of tea, that's why they're not perfectly halved all the time. Hope that makes sense.

Here are the results:

The moral of the story is this is not a cheap habit, but nor is it as expensive as getting a Starbuck's everyday, or even a Timmy's (if you were like me and got 1-2 a day). 

Sharing a pot of tea with a loved one keeps the cost down, too! 

Other ways to keep the costs down, if that's what you're looking to do, are to drink less dense teas. Forever Nuts is a very dense tea, making it very costly per spoonful, whereas White Nectarine, although more costly per gram, is actually less per serving since you use fewer grams in that serving. And...resteep your teas! Black teas cannot be resteeped due to the tannic acids released but other teas can. In fact, many teas, particularly oolongs, release a lovely new flavour upon resteeping. This could cut your cost in half, or thirds, or less, depending on how much you resteep.

Keep in mind this is only comparing one BRAND of tea, and one type of tea: looseleaf. This doesn't include grocery store bagged tea, etc. 

HOWEVER...because I'm dense (lol) I love my dense tea Forever Nuts and I will keep drinking it!

So for something luxurious, and wonderful, and healthy, I say, "Sign me up!!!" It's a vice I don't mind having. What are your thoughts?

Happy Steeping!